


keep living anyway

by betweenthepages



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Mentions of Lian/Peggy Carter, Mentions of Melinda/Andrew, cap 3 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 13:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6806563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweenthepages/pseuds/betweenthepages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the events of Captain America: Civil War, Melinda and her mother take a trip.</p>
            </blockquote>





	keep living anyway

**Author's Note:**

> The Agents of SHIELD Declassified book refers to Melinda May's mother as Lian, so she is called such here.

A box of steamed buns lands in her lap as soon as she slides into the car, then another.

 

“Eat,” her mother orders, as if Melinda is one of her cadets. One glance at her is all she allows before shifting the car back into drive, focusing on the road. Her tone softens marginally. “One box is pork, the other’s custard.”

 

 _I’m sorry about Andrew_ , Melinda hears as she bites into the pillowy softness. The centre is juicy, peppery with just a hint of sweet, the way she remembers them tasting as a child. _I’m sorry about Daisy_.

 

“I know it’s a bad time,” Lian says curtly. _Thank you for coming_.

 

Melinda stuffs the rest of the bun into her mouth, shrugging as nonchalantly as she can as her mother winces. “It’s always a bad time,” she says softly, echoing a sentiment her mother has evoked a thousand times in her lifetime. _This matters_.

 

Her mother nods, her shoulders still stiff. Black clothing is not unfamiliar on her, but today the color engulfs her, making her look frail and slight. Melinda glances over at her, taking in the set of her jaw and the slight tremble as she exhales, and wonders when her mother had gotten so old.

 

“Pull over, Mom. Let me drive for a while,” she offers.

 

Her mother shakes her head. Eyes never leaving the road, she leans over and takes the lid off the box of custard buns. “Eat, Melinda. You know how you are with airplane food.”

 

Melinda bites her lip, swallowing the temptation to argue that she’d been ten and China Eastern served terrible food anyway. One more glance at her mother and she picks up a bun instead, eating quietly until half the box is gone. “I could have flown us, you know,” she says, as her mother intently searches for parking in the packed airport lot.

 

Her mother’s voice is sharp. “This is not about SHIELD.” She puts the car in park, removing the key. “Private business.”

 

Melinda nods, silent.

 

 _I’m sorry about Peggy,_ she thinks, and settles for grabbing her mother’s bags along with her own instead.

 

—

 

Navigating the airport, Melinda starts to wonder if her mother had deliberately chosen this option as some kind of penance.

 

Liam grumbles the whole way through, from the check in line to the coffee they stop to get to the hard, uncomfortable seats by the gate.

 

“Tray,” Melinda says, in an attempt at levity, a callback to a childhood game. “Pencil. That awful keychain right there.”

 

Her mother sits, silent.

 

“We don’t have to play,” Melinda says hastily. “Forget it.”

 

A few minutes pass before her mother speaks again. “Charging cord. That woman’s earrings. A younger you would have said that fire extinguisher.”

 

Melinda smiles. “Aunt Peggy would have made do with that girl’s pencil case in an emergency.”

 

“You were always so worried as a child, Melinda,” her mother says, turning to fully face her for the first time. “You must know we never would have let anything happen to you. Guns or no guns.”

 

Melinda nods, thinking of the game they used to play, the way they read the room for threats and weapons. She’d been good at it, even as a child.

 

The mood turns somber again. _We both know now it’s not a promise anyone can keep_ , she thinks, and from the way her mother’s eyes drift off again, unable to look at her, she suspects her mother is thinking much of the same.

 

“She went easy,” her mother says finally. “In her sleep.”

 

Such an ordinary death for such an extraordinary woman. A good death. A gentle one. Certainly not one any of them ever dared to hope for.

 

She’s glad Peggy got there, at least.

 

The final call for boarding sounds, and she rises to her feet.

 

In the plane she watches her mother’s chest rise and fall as she sleeps, evening out into a rhythm.

 

Somehow, sleep comes for her too.

 

—

 

Her mother lets her handle immigration when they arrive, hanging a step behind her as they step up to the counter.

 

“Lee-ann May?” the officer calls, looking up quizzically. Melinda bristles. “It’s _Lian_ ,” she corrects, in an attempt to protect her mother from _something_ , but Lian merely nods and gestures for him to continue. He mumbles something that might be an approximation of Qiaolian, the ‘May’ unmistakeable in the aftermath, and Melinda feels the fight leave her body.

 

The passport she kept stashed at her mother’s listed her as Melinda May-Garner, still. She’s oddly grateful to her mother for having a new one made instead, oddly touched by the clumsy attempt to protect her from having this wound picked at.

 

Her mother taps her foot impatiently, hands playing with a necklace Melinda hasn’t seen around her neck for a long time. Both actions are uncharacteristic, even more so than the urge she herself feels to step forward and wrap her mother in a hug, but the officer speaks first instead.

 

“What is the purpose of your visit, ma’am?”

 

She glances at her mother, then back at him. “To bury a friend,” she says, simple and to the point.

 

 _Come as close to the truth as you can_ , Peggy had told her once. It’s not close enough.

 

“A partner,” she amends, and her mother’s eyes widen briefly.

 

Peggy had been there the first time she’d brought Andrew home for dinner, both in person and in the unmistakeable details in her mother’s room — the signature red lipstick in the medicine cabinet, a fragrance mixed in with her mother’s on her vanity. _That’s trouble_ , Peggy had said to Melinda, only half joking afterwards. _You have a tell when you’re in love_.

 

Her mother’s daughter, through and through. Fools in love, both of them, and here they are, the ones who _lived_.

 

The officer murmurs his condolences, and they are through.

 

—

 

Melinda drives, this time, her mother napping on and off in the passenger seat next to her. “Just keep yourself in the middle of the road,” Lian advises before drifting off, as if Melinda is not one of the best pilots SHIELD has ever seen, as if she hasn’t driven in worse conditions.

 

But then again maybe she hasn’t, Melinda thinks, suddenly maudlin as she finds herself effectively alone for the first time in days. She’s compromised in more ways than one, and the arrival of Daisy on the Bus all those years ago had disarmed her, rendered her usual coping mechanisms ineffective. There’s no tamping down these losses — not Andrew, not Peggy, and god forbid not Daisy, if it ever came to it. There is no cause big enough for her to channel the magnitude of those feelings.

 

Disaster has struck close to home more than once, but this is the first time she and her mother have both been hit at the knees at once.

 

She pulls over, suddenly uncertain of how to navigate this new terrain.

 

Her mother startles awake. “Mel? Zenmele?” she asks, switching back to both her childhood nickname and the more familiar tongue as she rubs her eyes. _What’s wrong?_

 

“Nothing’s wrong,” she replies shortly, signalling to merge back onto the road.

 

“Everything’s wrong, Melinda,” her mother says brusquely, fiddling with the GPS. “Is this what SHIELD is making nowadays?” She pulls the GPS from its holder in frustration, then stuffs it in her bag. “Drive. I’ll tell you the way.”

 

The road ahead of her blurs suddenly, the sting of tears hot in her eyes. Melinda draws in a shuddering breath.

 

Her mother does the same.

 

Melinda drives.

 

—

 

“Cremate me when it happens,” Lian says as they step into the church. Melinda stops in her tracks.

 

“I want to be cremated,” her mother repeats, and Melinda accepts this without arguing. “No flag,” her mother continues firmly, eyeing the coffin at the front of the church.

 

She doesn’t tell her mother that she’s imagined her funeral before, wondering often as a child if the next family gathering would be not a celebration but a mourning. Even with her mother in retirement she worries, afraid to get _the_ call.

 

“We’re here,” her mother announces, gesturing for Melinda to slide in first. They’re in the middle of the church, an inconspicuous spot in the crowd that almost overflows. A fitting send off for Aunt Peggy, Melinda thinks, though glancing over at the way her mother hunches down in her seat, she wonders if any send off could make this any easier.

 

The ceremony is short and packs a punch, though neither of them cry.

 

“Good speech,” her mother says approvingly, as Sharon steps down from the podium.

 

“Yeah,” Melinda echoes, knowing all too well the weight of legacy. “Did you know Peggy was going to assign her to me when she graduated from the Academy?”

 

Sharon had barely been twenty then, steely eyed and full of resolve.

 

Her mother smiles, but her voice is husky. “She wanted her to be with the best.”

 

“Keeping it in the family,” Melinda tries to joke, but finds herself tearing up too.

 

She tentatively lays a hand in her mother’s lap, palm open. Lian doesn’t take it, but she doesn’t shake her off, either.

 

Steve carries the coffin past, solemn, and they stand and follow.

 

—

 

Out in the sun, people mingle.

 

Natasha brushes past her deliberately as she walks back into the church, her steady fingers grasping May’s trembling ones briefly, then she is gone. Melinda’s glad the _I’m sorry_ wasn’t spoken out loud.

 

“Thank you for coming,” Sharon says, her voice worn as she shakes their hands, already looking ahead to the next people. Then she looks back at them, blinking, and before Melinda knows what’s happening Sharon has pulled her into a hug. She forces herself not to stiffen, but Sharon’s already letting go, reaching for her mother instead.

 

“Melinda. I’m glad you’re…” Sharon starts, then pauses, as if searching for the right word. “I’m glad you’re here,” she says more definitively, then turns to Lian. “I know what you meant to her,” she says seriously, taking Lian’s hand in both of hers.

 

Melinda looks away.

 

Had Sharon known? _Could_ she have known? Melinda remembers nights home from the academy, Aunt Peggy being in the kitchen in the morning, reaching into cabinets and finding mugs and plates with more ease than she herself did. She remembers coming home with her mother to see Peggy crashed on the couch; the way her mother had tucked a blanket around her had felt so intimate she’d looked away as to not intrude. Peggy, her fear barely restrained when Melinda had been hospitalised after a mission for the first time, reaching for her mother’s hand and not letting go.

 

It’s hard to imagine their love having existed outside of those quiet, private moments, but then again, the grief her mother wears today is loud, and Sharon is nothing if not keenly observant.

 

“She was very proud of you,” Melinda says, and though she must have heard the same words a hundred times over Sharon still smiles.

 

“And of you,” she returns, sincere. “You’ll have to excuse me.”

 

Melinda looks for her mother, but she is no longer there.

 

— 

 

Peggy Carter had told her, once, that to specialise in extraction one had to be okay with being not the hero but the turning point, to bring people back into the light.

 

Melinda’s never thought of her mother as a small woman, but her mother is a tiny figure at the side of the freshly dug grave, standing watch with her hands clasped together. Her head is bowed, and Melinda briefly entertains the thought of leaving her be, of giving her her space to mourn.

 

Instead, she squares her shoulders and walks towards her mother.

 

“You loved her,” Melinda says, brave and to the point. Lian looks up at her, taking her in, and Melinda can mark the moment where she surrenders, the moment her breath hitches and her face crumples.

 

She turns, allowing her mother her privacy, but her mother’s fingers catch hers instead, her grip iron tight. “Stay, Melinda.”

 

She feels the tide turn, and lets the wave wash over them both.


End file.
